When Clarice Beech finds her friend Peter Ramsey dead in his kitchen, she believes he’s succumbed to a fatal heart attack. Peter, who lived in one of the five cottages on Magpie Row in the Lincolnshire Wolds, was a keen supporter of stray cats, which made him very unpopular with the neighbours. And after Chris Morris, an alcoholic neighbour, disrupts Peter’s funeral, insisting Peter was murdered and he knows who the murderer is, Clarice discovers there’s no shortage of possible suspects among the Magpie Row inhabitants. Who, behind Magpie Row’s idyllic fa ade, might have had murder in mind? And, after his outburst at Peter’s funeral, where is Chris? And is Clarice, with her mission to tend to Peter’s strays, as well as uncover the truth about her friend’s death, putting herself in danger’s way?
